Security
Index
Intro
As your trusted opensource security product, we do care a lot about security and with our regular release schedule we try to stay ahead of possible incidents. Even though we are cautious and stay informed, sometimes issues do occur, in which case it’s good to know what to do.
Staying ahead
Even though we always encourage people to update regularly, sometimes it’s not possible to do so for various reasons.
Luckily OPNsense comes with an integrated security check for known vulnerabilities, which can be found in our firmware module. In which case you do have the opportunity to validate for yourself what the risk is to keep using the current version for a bit longer.
You can reach it via in the status pane, the button “Run an Audit” will bring you right into the security report.
If all goes well, a report like the one below will be shown:
***GOT REQUEST TO AUDIT SECURITY***
Currently running OPNsense 22.1.8_1 (amd64/OpenSSL) at Tue May 31 09:01:04 CEST 2022
vulnxml file up-to-date
0 problem(s) in 0 installed package(s) found.
***DONE***
Note
We do not offer community support on assessing if incidents on older versions do warrant an immediate upgrade on your end as this often depends on features used and settings configured. Our advise always will be to upgrade into the latest community or business version.
Warning
Please don’t report issues to us reported by the security health check, they are already known and highly likely a fix is pending for the next release.
Upstream vulnerabilities
Since OPNsense is a collection of opensource software, when finding an issue, it is always a good idea to inspect where is should be fixed first. In case you don’t know or aren’t sure, you can still ask on our end, just know that we don’t have the manpower to act as an intermediate between various projects.
Reporting an incident
Security incidents on our product can be reported to our security team available at security @ opnsense.org.
All reports should contain at least the following information:
A clear description of the vulnerability at hand
Which version(s) of our product seem to be affected
Any known workaround
When possible, some example code
Information handling policies
As a general policy we do favor full disclosure of vulnerability information after a reasonable amount of time to permit safe analysis and correction as well as appropriate testing for the correction at hand.
In order to coordinate with other affected parties, we might share parts of the information provided to us to them as well or ask the reporter to do so.
When the submitter is interested in a coordinated disclosure process, this should be indicated in any submission to avoid discussions later on.
Third party security verification
Intro
Within the OPNsense team and community we spend a lot of time safeguarding our software and keeping up with the latest threats, like checking used software against CVE’s on every release, implementing best practices in our development methods and offering clear and transparent release engineering.
To even improve this further, we decided to bring a third party on board and mold a process around our security verification by trained security professionals.
Business Edition
As our business edition is aimed at professional users, it does make sense to offer additional safeguards, like even more extensive testing on this product. Looking at the lifecycle of our software, this is also the most mature stage of what we do have to offer:
Development version
Available at every release, offers a glimpse of what to expect in the near future
Community version
When changes survive the development version, these are included in the community version, these are internally tested and feedback has been offered by community members.
Business Edition
Functional changes are being included in a more conservative manner, more feedback has been collected from development and community, leading to a mission critical version of your well known OPNsense firewall.
As security testing is quite time-consuming, we aim to offer a full qualification cycle at every major release.
Framework / Type of testing (LINCE)
In our quest for a framework to use, we found the LINCE methodology.
LINCE is a lightweight methodology for evaluating and certifying ICT products, created by Spain’s National Cryptologic Center (CCN), based on Common Criteria principles and oriented to vulnerability analysis and penetration tests.
LINCE strengths over other methodologies mainly consist of reduced effort and duration. However, the way in which it is applied also makes it possible to pay more attention to the critical points of each product, giving more weight to concrete and practical tests that combat real threats than to dense documentation or exhaustive functionality tests.
As most frameworks are not intended to be repeated very regularly, together with jtsec we came up with an approach which makes it possible to pass the test twice a year, which is needed to align with our Business Edition releases.
During every cycle, there’s always a chance that (small) issues appear which should be fixed, in close accordance with jtsec, the OPNSense team prepares fixes for the findings and makes sure that these are included in a future (minor) release.
Steps in the process
To better understand where a version of OPNsense is at in terms of verification, we distinct the following stages in the process, which we will also note on the version at hand.
In test - Software delivered to jtsec, in process (interaction between OPNsense and jtsec).
Tested - Software verified / tested, documentation not yet published.
LINCE Compliant - Test complete including summarised report (by jtsec)
Certification pending - Offered for formal certification. (as of 2023)
LINCE Certified - Certified by CCN (as of 2023)
The certification steps are planned to be executed once a year starting in 2023, this process is quite time consuming, but adds another independent party to the mix.
Timeline
The first fully certified product has been a community version (21.7.1), which offered us insights into the process and helped us improve the process which we would like to use for the business edition. We started this cycle with version 22.4 including full testing by jtsec and made plans for the future.
Results
Below you will find the versions that have been tested or are currently in test.
Version |
status |
Download |
|---|---|---|
BE 23.04 |
LINCE Compliant |
|
BE 23.10 |
LINCE Compliant / Certification pending |
|
BE 23.04 |
LINCE Compliant |
|
BE 22.10 |
LINCE Compliant |
|
BE 22.04 |
LINCE Compliant |
|